RCDC The goal of the Research Career Development Core (RCDC) is to recruit, mentor and train future aging research leaders with skills in translational research and clinical Investigation focused on the Duke Pepper OAIC theme to understand and modify multiple pathways of functional decline. Promising early investigators will be recruited to develop and/or expand their investigative skills with an emphasis on translating basic research findings into clinical studies or taking clinical research findings and posing new basic research questions. RCDC Scholars will take courses tailored to their specific career needs, receive mentoring from a team of researchers with topic and/or aging research methodology expertise, and receive leadership training to prepare them for key positions in geriatrics and gerontology. Individual career development plans are created and regularly reviewed to ensure continued professional development. Our mentoring plan is designed to motivate clinical investigators to explore basic research principles and basic scientists to interface with clinical researchers. RCD Core awardees will participate in OAIC seminars and conferences where interdisciplinary investigators discuss their work; in this milieu ideas for collaborations are started and discussed, resulting in new projects and lines of inquiry. The RCDC will ensure that its awardees utilize resources from other OAIC research cores when appropriate, and that awardees present their findings in the Data Integration Working Group to optimize data integration across the Pepper Center. For each early investigator chosen as an RCDC Scholar the Duke Pepper OAlC's intended outcome is to prepare and support them to become independent investigators doing aging research. After two to three years of support, success for each RCDC Scholar will be measured by their completion of proposed research, publications, and ability to secure research career development or independent investigator-initiated extramural funding. RCD Core Project Leaders, Kenneth Lyles, MD and Cathleen Colon-Emeric, MD, MHS, will work especially closely with Pilot /Exploratory Core Studies Core Project Leader, Kenneth Schmader, MD, to maximize the use of our Core's resources to help prepare our awardees so they have the requisite skills and pilot data to successfully complete for new funding. Over the previous 19 years the RCDC has produced talented, well-trained investigators to help lead the next generation of scientists in clinical, translational or basic research that focuses on understanding and modifying pathways of functional decline.